Devoid of the typically lighthearted aspects of the circus, Max Beckmann’s Annual Fair is filled with crowded, vertiginous pictoral spaces, focusing on acts primarily seen in the sideshow—many of which were known to be hoaxes—and offering glimpses of the performers backstage, perhaps revealing the artificiality of the circus.

After Beckmann’s traumatic experience as a member of the German medical corps during World War I, the theater, carnival, and circus became increasingly important settings in his imagery, functioning as metaphors for folly, political hypocrisy, and chaos in postwar German life.

Whereas August Sander photographed circus people as distinct social types, Max Beckmann identified with their position as outsiders. The Fair portfolio opens with a portrait of Beckmann as a barker, rounding up customers for the “Circus Beckmann.” Self-portraits are scattered throughout the portfolio, in which the fair is a metaphor for the marketplace of life. In The Tall Man, the artist is represented twice: as a spectator in the left corner and as the sideshow freak, presented to the audience by a caricature of Beckmann’s publisher, I.B. Neumann. The fairground ride at the back is labeled “Panopticum,” a comment on the visual display of the artist. Even The Tightrope Walkers depicts the artist, a mysterious sheeted figure precariously balancing as he steps towards his first wife, Minna.